Just 7 per cent of Edinburgh TV Festival panellists based in Scotland

The National

a day ago

Over the next 4 days at the top rating event in the television industry calendar, an estimated 2000 small screen professionals will attend more than 60 keynote lectures, debates, masterclasses and networking opportunities.
But despite the main sponsor being Scotland's national screen agency, 206 of the 220 participants invited to speak at or moderate the ETVF's main panel sessions are based outside Scotland.
That's 93%. I don't think this represents a good enough return on Screen Scotland's investment.
READ MORE: Scottish university ranked among worst in the UK for Palestine repression
What's more, if you're a freelancer based in Scotland, a standard four-day pass will still set you back you £899 plus booking fee and VAT. A 'limited' number of £50 day passes were allocated for the second or third days.
This gesture was aimed at the more than 50% of TV freelancers around the UK who aren't currently working as a result of a severe contraction the volume of programmes and films being commissioned.
The reality is very few Scottish freelancers can afford to go. I sincerely hope the ETVF is collecting all the data. We're paying for this bash so it would be good to know exactly how much of our screen talent have been able to attend.
A Scottish festival built in London?
The ETVF has been held in Scotland's capital city since 1976, presumably to tie in with the cultural delights on offer at the Edinburgh International Festival, giving TV execs, commissioners and producers the opportunity to powwow and hobnob while taking in a couple hit shows.
But despite being supported by Screen Scotland since other funders fell away during the lockdown years, the Edinburgh Television Festival's office is still located in London. Just one of the 16 staff members listed on its website are based in Scotland.
These optics are not good and, history aside, once Screen Scotland became its principal funder, with a funding award of £86,000 this year, you'd have thought this would change. After all, we invented the telephone as well as television.
Curation of the 50th anniversary ETVF programme has been co-curated by this year's Advisory Chair Jane Tranter, CEO of Bad Wolf, a successful film and high end tv drama production company based in Wales.
Few delegates will know that 95% of the senior creative teams hired to work on three seasons of His Dark Materials, that Bad Wolf made for HBO, isn't Welsh. 40% are based in London.
Stephen Lambert, television producer extraordinaire, has been invited to talk about his life and work. I'd wager he won't be mentioning that the only way to get his company to increase the number of freelancers based in Scotland working on The Traitors, a BBC Network Scottish commission, was to for Screen Scotland to pay it to create a handful of trainee roles.
In the run up to this week, the chair of the Edinburgh TV Festival commented on a LinkedIn post decrying the festival's elitism by pointing out the town halls that were held around the UK earlier this year to generate panel topic ideas.
It's not all 'Tina Fey and Graham Norton' says Fatima Salaria. 'We've curated a schedule that includes sessions on: The collapse of the commissioning pipeline, Freelancer burnout, the impact of AI on creative work, The future of PSB, regional opportunity, and inclusion and accountability in toxic workplace cultures.'
It's all good stuff but very few of Scotland's television freelancers will be there to benefit. What's more, many of the main sessions at the ETVF will be closed to the press so won't be reported, nor filmed or recorded for others to watch at a later date. For those who do make it, some of the networking sessions are barely an hour long. Good luck standing out from the crowd in that speed dating scenario.
There is some good news. Last year, just one of the panellists was based in Scotland, Kirsty Wark. So, this year represents an increase. But the 7% of panellists who are based in Scotland includes a single senior TV freelancer, a celebrated director of high drama. Just one!
The others are two Channel 4 commissioning editors, plus another from MG Alba, the Directors of BBC Scotland and Culture & Experience at the People's Postcode Lottery, three Execs from two independent productions companies, an author/rapper/broadcaster, and two comedians, no joke, all of whom are, if I'm not mistaken, based in or work out of Glasgow which, by the way, is the centre of TV production in Scotland, not Edinburgh.
Working with the ETVF, Screen Scotland has jointly provided 21 producers, development producers, directors and writers based in Scotland with full delegate passes, nine of whom also receive accommodation in Edinburgh during the event. It's good but not enough.
An uncertain future
There will of course be multiple other positive outcomes for Scotland, the opportunity for our brilliant production companies to meet with London and International television decision makers being the most significant.
Broadcasting is going through a period of unprecedented change, existential for many Scottish freelancers, and we need to understand what's happening in a production ecosystem that's increasingly globally focused.
There are many challenges, mostly significantly how tv programmes will be funded in the future. No one has all the answers. No one quite knows what lies ahead.
This week, at the ETVF, all the big topics will be discussed. PSB and streamer shopping lists will be outlined and precious market insight revealed, enabling programme and script developers to better tailor their pitches and meet commissioner requirements. Securing greenlights is the name of the game.
But very few of Scotland's television production freelancers will be there to learn from all the assembled talent, begging the question, is Screen Scotland's sponsorship of the Edinburgh Television Festival achieving all that it could?
Unless, this Scottish public money is used to break down some of the barriers that have held Scotland's directors and producers back for decades, namely access to opportunity, then the answer most definitely is, no it isn't.